Government Policies (Wales)

Jonathan Edwards Excerpts

Wednesday 26th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Murphy (Torfaen) (Lab)]

I have been called some things over the years in politics, but I have never been called a metropolitan liberal before. I rather fancy that most of my colleagues in the Welsh parliamentary Labour party would never be called metropolitan liberals.

I believe the Secretary of State is genuine and sincere about wanting to work with the Welsh First Minister, and I believe that his attendance at various events is, as I said, something that we can admire, but I fear that his boss is not of the same mind. He might have been standing next to him last week in Newport, but since the last general election, when the Prime Minister said that there would be a respect agenda in Wales and in Scotland, that has effectively collapsed. It collapsed when the Government tried to ensure that the number of Welsh parliamentary constituencies would be unfairly reduced. It collapsed at the time of the Scottish referendum, when the Union itself was under threat, when the Prime Minister came out and said that all that mattered to him now was not to keep the Union going but to diminish and downgrade the presence of Welsh and Scottish Members of Parliament and their responsibilities in this House of Commons.

The Secretary of State went on to talk about us all wanting to talk down Wales and the Welsh economy. For the past 18 months the Government have not stopped talking down the Welsh national health service. What is the difference? Does the right hon. Gentleman not understand that talking down the Welsh health service means that he is demeaning consultants, GPs, nurses and everybody else who works in the Welsh national health service? We cannot have it both ways. Either he says that there is devolution, Wales must go its own way and the Government will accept what happens there, or he intervenes for party political purposes and talks down, in this case, the health service.

The Secretary of State referred to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) about the jobs growth policy of the Welsh Government, and more or less said that that does not matter and that people would have jobs anyway. That is a preposterous thing to say, because the Jobs Growth Wales programme has been a magnificent success, with 16,000 new job opportunities over two years. Only last week, there was an announcement of 350 new jobs in my constituency —good jobs, too. What my colleagues have been saying here in this Chamber is that of course we welcome the reduction in unemployment, but the jobs that people are going into are not of the sort we particularly want them to go into. The new jobs that have come to Cwmbran are precisely the sort of jobs I want my constituents to work in.

The Minister also talked about Europe, responding to a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Rhondda (Chris Bryant). A great Tory grandee once said that the secret weapon of the Conservative party is loyalty. Over the past few months, the Conservative Back Benchers have erupted over Europe, with the loss of two Members to the United Kingdom Independence party and possibly more to come. What sort of signal does that give to businesses that want to invest in Wales? What sort of signal does it give to firms in my constituency which rely overwhelmingly on our membership of the EU? Component car manufacturers in my constituency would go to continental Europe literally on the day we left the EU.

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

As always, the right hon. Gentleman is making very considered points. However, will he explain why the Welsh Government have decided to cut the budget for Jobs Growth Wales if it is such a great success?

[Paul Murphy]

I fancy it is because of the money that has been cut from the budget generally, because of what the Government here are doing by reducing the amount of money that is coming through the block grant. The Secretary of State actually said somewhere in his speech—he is getting a bit like his boss now, making things up from time to time—that there was no inward investment in Wales in 13 years of the Labour Government. That is rubbish—of course there was inward investment in Wales during those 13 years. As Secretary of State, I went around talking to firms that had benefited from inward investment and so on.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Edwards (Carmarthen East and Dinefwr) (PC)]

I shall speak about not only the motion, but the effects on Wales of the Treasury’s economic policy. The Chancellor himself said that the UK Government’s austerity policy should be judged against two key benchmarks: eliminating the deficit by the end of this Parliament and preserving the triple A credit rating. He has failed on both terms. The Treasury now plans to eliminate the deficit by 2019, while two of the three credit rating agencies have downgraded the UK’s status.

Plaid Cymru has consistently advocated an alternative fiscal strategy based on increasing infrastructure investment. Indeed, we find ourselves in the slightly uncustomary position of being supported by the International Monetary Fund and the CBI, both of which have advocated a sharp increase in infrastructure investment to boost economic development. That is why securing Barnett consequentials from projects such as High Speed 2 is a key priority for Plaid Cymru. Given that the Institute for Economic Affairs estimates that that project will cost £80 billion, a fair share for Wales would be about £4 billion. Such an investment would revolutionise transport in Wales.

Following a freedom of information request by “Newsnight”, we saw in a KPMG report a full insight into the impact of HS2 on the south Wales economy. It suggested that Wales would be hit hard, with an annual economic loss to south Wales of more than £220 million. However, when we considered the paving Bill, all the Wales-based MPs of the London parties voted in favour, despite there being no promises of a fair share for Wales.

A range of transport infrastructure projects is being promoted, including HS3 at an initial cost of £7 billion and Crossrail 2 at £15 billion. There are plans to extend Crossrail 1 into the home counties and for an underground inner orbital road for London at a cost of £30 billion. Boris Johnson has called for £1 trillion of future infrastructure investment in London by 2050, mainly to cope with the extra demands of HS2. It should be enshrined in law that England-only infrastructure projects that are financed through the public purse result in automatic consequential payments that Wales can invest in its own infrastructure.

As we debate the impact of Government policy on Wales, events in Scotland loom large. The infamous vow made to the people of Scotland on the eve of the independence referendum has implications for Wales. With all three unionist parties now pledged to preserving public funding in Scotland at its current level, they have, for themselves, defined fair funding. If it is good enough for Scotland, it should also be good enough for Wales. Public funding on a Scottish level would provide an extra £1.2 billion to invest in Welsh public services. When challenged on this yesterday in the National Assembly, the Labour First Minister said it was England’s money. This shows how clueless he is. He was more than happy to back the vow for Scotland yet refuses to make the case for Wales.

We also await the Smith commission, which will publish its announcements tomorrow. If the Financial Times and The Guardian are to be believed, the signature recommendation agreed by all the parties will be the full devolution of income tax to Scotland, to be enacted in a Bill early in the next Parliament. Yet the Wales Bill, which completed its passage on Monday, would merely give the Welsh Government control of 10% of income tax receipts, and then only after a referendum. Once again, Westminster is treating Wales like a second-class nation.

I was astounded to read Labour’s attempt to rewrite history regarding the bedroom tax in its motion before the House today. The Tory and Lib Dem Government undoubtedly brought in one of the most ill-thought-out and pernicious attacks on the vulnerable with the bedroom tax. Sixty per cent. of those affected are disabled. Where was the Labour party when it was needed to stand up for the weak? It was nowhere to be seen. It failed to vote against the Welfare Reform Bill on Second Reading, which brought in many of the current damaging cuts to social protection, including the bedroom tax. It was Plaid Cymru, along with the Scottish National party and the Greens, who led the first Opposition Day debate on the bedroom tax here in this House and voted against it. We now find out after the resignation of the former head of the Labour party in Scotland that she wanted to oppose the bedroom tax in public, but was restrained from doing so by the London bosses who wanted to see which way the wind was blowing.

A recent report by Sheffield Hallam university, entitled “The impact of welfare reform in the Valleys”, has been mentioned many times today. It noted that more than £1 billion a year is being lost from the Welsh economy owing to welfare cuts. In some communities it is a loss of up to £1,000 per adult of working age in places such as Maerdy in the Rhondda and Gurnos in Merthyr Tydfil, and £790 in my own constituency in Ammanford. To put it in context, despite west Wales and the valleys qualifying for the highest level of EU funding, welfare reform will remove almost four times as much a year as is received from the EU for regional development, which the Labour party voted to cut when it teamed up with Tory Eurosceptics on the Government Benches.

The Sheffield Hallam study notes that reforms to incapacity benefits are the largest single element in terms of savings the Treasury is seeking to make. These reforms, most notably the changes to work capability assessments, were brought in by the Labour Government in 2008, but are only now taking full effect. One measure that would undoubtedly help remedy the situation is an economic fairness Act that would level up individual and geographical wealth across the UK by prioritising foreign direct investment and infrastructure investment to poorer areas.

Another key measure would be to raise the minimum wage to the level of the living wage. In Wales, which is badly affected by low pay, this would result in a pay rise for 250,000 people. The Labour party should be ashamed of its policy to increase the minimum wage to only £8 an hour by 2020, described as “not at all ambitious” by its own guru, Alan Milburn. Meanwhile, Plaid Cymru is committed to raising the minimum wage to the level of the living wage, a move that is socially just and will leave the Treasury £1.5 billion a year better off, according to Landman Economics.

I see that Labour’s motion talks about its energy price freeze policy, which will unfortunately not affect off-grid consumers, some of the worst affected in many Welsh communities, including my own in rural Carmarthenshire. Again, its policy is a little rich given that it presided over the creation of the big six fix energy market at the beginning of the century. That is why Plaid Cymru has argued for the full devolution of energy policy and the setting up of a publicly owned, not-for-distributable-profit energy generation company in order to deliver lower prices to consumers.